Monday, Monday... All presents bought, except one, which will be plucked from my mother's gift closet and wrapped. Our shopping was terribly haphazard, dangerously so, but I think we got good stuff, for everyone and for each other. I got a new digital camera, early, say a week ago, but I haven't been using it because of busy, busy, business and a little guilt at having it before Christmas... But that will all be remedied soon and so I'll try and get pictures of some of the spectacular sights we expect to see on our travails to the various family homes and maybe some we don't and then I'll post them here. If all goes well, of course. There are promises of snow and ice, but I'm hoping we'll miss the worst of it during the times we need to be criss-crossing the state by auto.

We saw Gangs of New York. Bleh. I suggest you read Alex's book, A Scattering of Jades instead. Would that the two stories had more in common than an historical overlap. It's kind of perplexing that Scorcese (what did those battles with Harvey Weinstein do to you, Martin?) would helm a movie that spends so much elaboration on place and history and perhaps even once upon a draft long ago had a theme for such a trite, stupid, barrage of half-formed cliches and fully-formed incoherence. Christopher kept remarking afterward that the movie was pointless because nothing happened in it, nothing substantial changed and it didn't mean anything. Well, he's right. I kept trying to hedge, to puzzle it out, to see the ghost of the movie that might have excited these people, people like Scorsese and Harvey Weinstein who don't have a bad track record where these things are concerned, enough to think it was worth spending bits of life and truckloads of money to make this movie. But, it's not even good enough to really be haunted by the ghost-of-what-might-have-been. Too bad.

Frida, however, was wonderful. Really. A biopic that seemed to capture the spirit of the times and the essence of the woman. And the paintings. It got the paintings, and showed them perfectly and unpretentiously in the light in which they were created. I have to say, the filmmaking dazzled me. Bits here and there which were just too lovely to discuss. The performances were all convincing, even Ashley Judd and Ed Norton's, and Salma Hayek did better physical acting than I would have dreamed her capable of. They managed to include all the necessary stuff, and some besides, and I didn't mind anything that got left out. The living, breathing paintings, those were amazing things. After the horrid Gangs of, it was nice to see frames filled with pulsating spectacle for a reason. This is one of those movies that I'll never comprehend why it didn't get better reviews.

Trent Lott was a pompous ninny boobyhead; we knew that ahead of time. So, did the people who elected him. I'd have cast the first stone before he ever opened his mouth. The problem it seems to me is that everyone who's drawn to politics these days, shouldn't be allowed to visit a political office let alone hold one. We need better people, and we need to vote for them when we do have them. It's not that simple, but then, yeah, it is.

Go figure. Or don't.